Ruth Madoff's 60 Minutes interview last week might as well have been set up by the makers of Tower Heist to put her husband back in the headlines now that that debacle has been eclipsed by the global financial crisis. Initially conceived as an "urban" Ocean's Eleven (from which only Eddie Murphy remains), this genially absurd, gently cathartic, and slightly stale Brett Ratner caper is now about the employees of America's most expensive apartment building (played by the haphazardly disguised Trump International Hotel & Tower on Central Park West), who plot to take back what was rightfully theirs when the billionaire in the penthouse (Alan Alda) embezzled their pension fund. Like the Ocean's films, the interest is in seeing if the stars, including Ben Stiller as the ringleader and Matthew Broderick as a yuppie facing foreclosure, play well with each other, but it's Alda, evoking an earlier nasty turn in Crimes and Misdemeanors, who steals the movie.
